Page:Christopher Wren--the wages of virtue.djvu/53

Rh you to death if you offend him," and the recruit, turning, beheld a grey-moustached, white-haired elderly man, bronzed, lined, and worn-looking—a typical French army vielle moustache—an "old sweat" from whose lips the accents of a refined English gentleman came with the utmost incongruity.

The youth's face brightened with interest. Obviously this old dear was a public-school, or 'Varsity man, or, very probably, an ex-British officer.

"Good egg," quoth he, extending a hand behind him for a surreptitious shake. "See you anon, what?"

"Yes, you'll all come to the Seventh Company. We are below strength," said Legionary John Bull, in whose weary eyes had shone a new light of interest since they fell upon this compatriot of his own caste and kidney.

A remarkably cool and nonchalant recruit—and surely unique in the history of the Legion's "blues" in showing absolutely no sign of privation, fear, stress, criminality, poverty, depression, anxiety, or bewilderment!

"Now, what'n hell is he doin' in thet bum outfit?" queried the Bucking Bronco of his friend John Bull, who kept as near as possible to the Englishman whom he had warned against ill-timed causticity of humour.

"He's some b'y, thet b'y, but he'd better quit kickin'. He's a way-up white man I opine. What's 'e a'doin' in this joint? He's a gay-cat and a looker. He's a fierce stiff sport. He has sand, some—sure. Yep," and Mr. Hiram Cyrus Milton checked himself only just in time from defiling the immaculate and sacred parade-ground, by "signifying in the usual manner" that he was mentally perturbed, and solaced